


boy on fire (i have no flowers)

by galacticglaze



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 19:22:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18482755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticglaze/pseuds/galacticglaze
Summary: she has to talk to two parents who don’t have a son anymore. she has to continue without him.





	boy on fire (i have no flowers)

life is more bearable nowadays but the knife-sharp edge does not get any duller. she walks it every night when she lays down in a cold bed and every morning when she wakes up in a warm one, but in both scenarios she does so alone. the blade cuts smooth ridges into her feet and she can’t remember if she’s bleeding or not anymore, because she can’t afford to look down.

it feels as though if she does, she runs the risk of being sliced right down the middle.

he was her sunshine, the persistent existence of light. if she followed her namesake and made like the moon then she’s been orbiting around him all this time, whether she’s wanted to or not. things were okay because no one imagined them being otherwise; what is a solar system without its sun?

(this is a lie. this was a lie when she fizzed out of existence in the cold arctic snow, and a lie when he came to her room that night, sweating and quiet and still. it is a lie when she comes back to the cold tundra years later— this time for real— and finds that he has been gone longer than she could ever fathom.)

all yellow and red and dotted with freckles, bony knees and hard-backed books filled with science, bright eyes and a fridge full of food. a home of their own.

what a beautiful mistake she made.

and he shines so _bright—_ he does it till the very end, when he presses his dry lips to her under the grey sky opening over the eiffel tower, while the wind sucks all the air out of everything. it may as well be a beautiful day. they’ll come back another time, he says. the sky is dark and ominous and still he calls it the city of lights.

this isn’t a lie, actually, but instead a broken promise. she doesn’t go back; what she does do is fold all their things into little boxes and picks her heels up and leaves behind the crinkled bedsheets of palo alto (the ones that still smell like him). she has to talk to two parents who don’t have a son anymore. she has to continue without him.

yes, life is still sharp. she still slides along the unforgiving edge of the knife, the other side of the arrow that she’s just now discovering, and there is nothing she can do. the way ahead is hard, but the path behind her is slippery with the blood she’s left behind. some things she will always have to do on her own.

(as always, life holds a duality she never asked for.)

she thinks maybe she’s been cursed to hunt alone all this time; she was just blinded by his rays before. now that he’s gone, she turns out all the lights and wraps her new covers around herself  (they smell of laundry detergent, not of him).

outside, the rain knocks at her window. she does not let it in.

**_fin_ **


End file.
